The Glory That Was
![]() First edition | |
Author | L. Sprague de Camp |
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Cover artist | Ed Emshwiller |
Language | English |
Genre | Science fiction |
Publisher | Avalon Books |
Publication date | 1960 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (hardback) |
Pages | vii, 223 |
The Glory That Was is a
The book is a tour de force for de Camp, bringing together features of several of the types of fiction he specialized in, including his time travel stories, historical novels, and trademark "domestic science fiction", in which ordinary people encounter the extraordinary—though as it turns out no time travel is involved, it is not a historical novel, and the "ordinary" people live in the twenty-seventh century.
Two of de Camp's friends and colleagues, science fiction writers Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, with whom he had worked on military research during World War II, were involved in the book in different ways. It features a laudatory introduction by Heinlein and is dedicated to Asimov, whom de Camp stated "helped to push this one over the hump." Asimov recorded some vivid impressions of the author's research for the book in his own introduction to de Camp's short story collection The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (1953).[1]
Plot summary
Twenty-seventh century Earth is united by a worldwide democratic government presided over by a constitutional monarch, though the former is veering toward totalitarianism and the latter is a megalomaniac. To neutralize the World Emperor the power-hungry prime minister has ceded to him control of Greece for use in a mysterious secret project. Now Greece is surrounded by a force field cutting it off from the rest of the world, and people of Greek descent everywhere have vanished, presumably spirited away to the isolated region by the Emperor's agents.
One such kidnapped citizen is Thalia, wife of classical scholar Wiyem Flin. Anxious to get her back, he recruits his friend, magazine editor Knut Bulnes, into a desperate attempt to penetrate the force barrier. Bulnes, hoping to obtain an exclusive story on the Emperor's mysterious project, agrees. The two succeed, sailing a boat through the barrier when it is temporarily disrupted by a storm.
Inside the force field, Flin and Bulnes are astounded to find themselves not in 27th century Greece, but to all appearances the Classical Greece of Pericles and the Peloponnesian War. Pretending to be foreign philosophers, they establish themselves in Athens as they attempt to unravel the mystery, and begin to discover that all is not as it seems; the wife of the playwright Euripides, for instance, appears to be Thalia, though she does not recognize Flin and has no memory of her former life.
After meeting the astronomer
Escaping, they discover an elaborate system of machinery and antennas hidden in the colossal statue of
Relationship to previous works
There are hints of the concept of using brainwashed people to reenact the past in some of de Camp's other works. In his science fiction novel Lest Darkness Fall (1939), the main character considers the possibility that instead of being thrown back in time he has found himself in a Rome that Benito Mussolini has forced to imitate the 6th century, but dismisses the idea as impractical. In the fantasy novel The Carnelian Cube (1948) by de Camp and his collaborator Fletcher Pratt an actual reenactment of the Biblical siege of Samaria by the Assyrians is performed, directed by astrology-guided archaeologists using drafted and hypnotized participants. And in the story "Cornzan the Mighty" (1955) actors are conditioned to believe the scenario they are performing is real.
Reception
References
- ^ a b c d Laughlin, Charlotte; Daniel J. H. Levack (1983). De Camp: An L. Sprague de Camp Bibliography. San Francisco: Underwood/Miller. p. 58.
- ^ a b c d e The Glory That Was title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- ^ Orion Publishing Group's L. Sprague de Camp webpage
- ^ Amazon.com entry for e-book edition
- ^ Gale, Floyd C. (August 1960). "Galaxy's 5 Star Shelf". Galaxy Science Fiction. pp. 117–121.